My parents bring home roughly $100k together per year. They're taxed near half a million. Those are radically different.

It depends largely on where you live and cost of living there, but in many areas of the country a family income of $100K per year would be considered upper-middle class. I know there are a large number of families who would love to have that kind of income. Several families I know from various functions I attend regularly get by on 40K per year or less, even with two incomes and children.

As to taxes, some tax laws are odd and should probably be revised. No one should have to pay for taxes on some of the things businesses have to pay taxes on now.

On the other hand, the structure of a business can save you paying taxes twice (once on business income and a second time on personal income). For example, someone mentioned the S-Corporation, which is one way to eliminate the double tax. Then again, if you get greater benefits through the current structure in other ways, it might not help to structure it that way.

Raising taxes on the wealthy would generate some income (obviously). It's not too significant of an increase that it would cause the negative side effects people too often fear with these increases. With marginal tax rates, most of the people who would pay more at all wouldn't pay much more. It's only the incredibly wealthy who would actually feel the increase in any substantial terms. Still, those are the people politicians sometimes defend the most (who do you think finances their campaigns?).